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However, permission to copy this material is hereby granted to the extent that the copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent documentation or patent disclosure, as it appears in the United States Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
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The present invention is related in the general area of object oriented programming and the definition of fine-grained models in situations where only coarse-grained models are available.
To minimize the verbosity of this document, a variety of abbreviations and definitions will be provided to aid the reader. This information may be applicable to the prior art, the present invention, or some combination of the two. No assumption should be made regarding the applicability of this information except as referenced within the applicable preferred embodiment description of the present invention as given later in this document.
The following acronyms will be used throughout this document:
AID Native Identifier for TL1 objects
AMC Alcatel Management Console
AMV ALMAP View (GUI Framework)
API Application Programming Interface
AS/ASM Alarm Surveillance Manager
ANS Alcatel Network Systems
ASN.1 Abstract Syntax Notation 1
CGA Common Gateway Architecture
COBRA Common Object Request Broker Architecture
CMIP Common Management Information Protocol
CMISE Common Management Information Service Element
CRB Change Review Board
DDTS Fault Report System
DII Dynamic Invocation Interface
DME Distributed Management Environment
DN Distinguished Name (name in a NVP)
EML Element Management Layer
EMS Element Management System
FAD Functional Access Domain
FDN Fully Distinguished Name
GDMO Guidelines for the Definition of Managed Objects
GEM Generic Element Manager
GP Gateway/Proxy
GUI Graphical User Interface
GW Gateway
HPOV HP Open View
IDL Interface Description Language
IDL Interface Description Language
IM Information Model
IOR Interoperable object Reference
IP Internet Protocol
LIT Local Integration Test
LOC Lines of Code
LTN Local Transport Networks
MIB Management Information Base
MSAN Multi Service Access Node
NE Network Element
NML Network Management Layer
NMS Network Management System
NVP Name-Value Pair
OAD Object Access Domain
OMG Object Management Group
Os Operations System (e.g. Network Management Application)
OVE Approved instructions for engineering activities
PNM Physical Network Manager
PY Person Years
Q3 An object-oriented network management protocol
RDN Relative Distinguished Name
RTC Real Time Clock
SDH Synchronous Digital Hierarchy
SIT System Integration Test
SITC SIT completed
SMF System Management Framework
SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol
SONET Synchronous Optical Network
SQL Structured Query Language
SVT System Validation Test
SW Software
TLD Top Level Design
TL1 Transaction Language 1
UML Unified Modeling Language
X.25 A communications protocol
These acronyms must be interpreted within their context as describing either the prior art (in some contexts) or the present invention and its embodiments. Some terms will apply to both the prior art and the present invention while others may apply to one or neither of these.
The following definitions will be used throughout this document in describing the prior art as well as the present invention and its embodiments:
Hierarchical modelxe2x80x94an object oriented model in which parent-child relationships are defined. Reference FIG. 1 (0101) for a typical example of this model.
Coarse-grained modelxe2x80x94a semi-object-oriented model in which there is only a very limited amount of object instances. A coarse-grained model typically only defines a limited number of object classes and deals with a very limited number of object instances (tens of objects). Reference FIG. 1 (0102) for a typical example of this model.
Fine-grained modelxe2x80x94an object-oriented model in which there is an object instance for each entity in the problem domain. A fine-grained model typically defines an object class for each entity type in the problem domain and deals with lots of object instances (thousands to millions of objects). Reference FIG. 1 (0103) for a typical example of this model.
Facade objectxe2x80x94an object that acts as a front (or shell) for dispatching requests to an actual modeled object. A facade object is the key towards the definition of coarse-grained modules.
Fully Distinguished Namexe2x80x94a unique identifier for objects in hierarchical object modules. A FDN is a sequence of Relative Distinguished Names (RDNs). An RDN is a name-value pair (NVP) in which the name is commonly referred to as the Distinguished Name (DN). Each child of the same parent has a unique RDN. In other words, each RDN is unique within its parent""s context.
Object Viewxe2x80x94the definition of the (sub)set of attributes and the (sub)set of operations visible on the object. Different views on the same object have a different set of attributes and/or a different set of operations available on the object.
1. Background of the Invention
The present invention is related in the general area of object oriented programming and the definition of fine-grained models in situations where only coarse-grained models are available. In these situations, the prior art generally teaches a strongly typed interface which requires the client and server to be modified for each change in the IDL interface. This is in part because typical object oriented interfaces do not support multiple views on the same modeled object.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Typical object oriented frameworks such as CORBA allow static interface discovery per object class, but do not permit a dynamic interface per object instance. Thus, the prior art teaches that while a framework of views may be generated, these views are generally static in nature.
Additionally, the prior art provides no mechanism of browsing and/or manipulating a model view. These limitations make it difficult if not impossible to traverse a modeled object and perform inquiry and/or manipulation operations on that object.
Accordingly, the objects of the present invention are (among others) to circumvent the deficiencies in the prior art and affect the following objectives:
(1) To permit multiple views to be supported in an object oriented framework.
(2) To permit browsing and/or manipulation of modeled object through a variety of coarse-grained and/or fine-grained model views.
(3) Within a network management context, to utilize fine-grained views to enable enhanced network element management functions.
While these objectives should not be understood to limit the teachings of the present invention, in general these objectives are achieved in part or in whole by the disclosed invention that is discussed in the following sections. One skilled in the art will no doubt be able to select aspects of the present invention as disclosed to affect any combination of the objectives described above.
As illustrated in FIG. 2 (0200), the present invention details a network navigator system and method incorporating a client/server (0210, 0220) architecture in which a network coarse-grained model (or single object) (NameSpaceObject) (0211) is used to browse/manipulate a fine-grained object model (0221). The disclosed invention permits a client application (0210) to discover the detailed interface provided by each object instance in the fine-grained model (0221).
A client application wishing to invoke an operation on a server-side object first obtains an object reference (IOR) (0231) to a NameSpaceObject instance (0241). Each NameSpaceObject instance (0241) stores a pointer (0251) to an object in the fine-grained model (0221). The NameSpaceObject interface (0241) provides operations to move this pointer around in a hierarchical model (0101). Once the pointer (0251) is set to reference a certain object in the fine-grained model (0221), this object becomes the target for all further operations. The available operations include object contents discovery/manipulation (FIG. 4, (0421)), object interface discovery (FIG. 4, (0422)), and operation invocation (FIG. 4, (0423)).
As illustrated in FIG. 3, the present invention may have application in situations where there are one or more telecommunications networks (0310, 0320) that may or may not contain equipment from different vendors. The network equipment elements (NE) used within these networks (0315, 0316, 0325, 0326) may take many forms, including but not limited to switch gear, multiplexers, and the like. These network elements (0315, 0316, 0325, 0326) are generally under control of one or more computer systems (0311, 0321) that are controlled by computer software (0312, 0322) that may be stored on a variety of storage media. This computer software generally takes the form of one or more network element managers (0313, 0314, 0323, 0324) that control and monitor the network elements (0315, 0316, 0325, 0326) that comprise constituent components of the telecommunication networks (0310, 0320).
The present invention can in some preferred embodiments deal specifically with implementations of the network element manager (0313, 0314, 0323, 0324) as they relate to the overall control and monitoring of the various network elements (0315, 0316, 0325, 0326) within the context of one or more telecommunications networks (0310, 0320). In this context the ability to interrogate and manipulate generic network elements (0315, 0316, 0325, 0326) within this generalized telecommunications framework is the target function of the present invention applied embodiment.
Network elements (NE) (0315, 0316, 0325, 0326) as illustrated in FIG. 3 generally make use of many different communication protocols. This diversity in communications protocols increases the difficulty and time to customize a common network element manager system (EMS) (0313, 0314, 0323, 0324) for every network element using a different protocol in the system. For example, incorporating the individual protocols within the EMS generally increases the overall subsystem complexity, increases code size, probability of software error/failure, and compilation time.